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Enemy of The State

An okay thriller.

• The end

Once again, a story that is built-up nicely has all questions and loose ends solved by accident.

When Dean (Will Smith) leads the NSA guy (Jon Voight) to the mobster’s social club in order to get the tape, he’s only hoping that somehow things will get resolved. There’s only a chance the FBI will notice him from their surveillance spot and do something because Dean doesn’t know the FBI spotted him in the beginning of the movie when he first visited the social club! What’s worse- the FBI only comes in after the shootings!

There is no tension because we don’t have anything specific to expect. The superficial mob characters are established early on and then forgotten; they’re not a real part of the story. And the grand shootout is a direct rip-off from another Tony Scott movie, True Romance.

This ending would work beautifully with Dean creating a more specific situation out of the “tape,” perhaps telling Voight that the mobster is out to blackmail him. This way the NSA guys would invade the place. The bottom line is that there should be something where it’s not all a crap shoot.
A good example as to how to join and close a few open plot-lines for a grand finale is in Midnight Run. DeNiro’s character has more things to resolve than Dean and he does it with a clever plan that climaxes in the airport with all principal players present.

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